Free Educational Apps for Iphone and Ipad

Apps for homeschooling compiles free Apps (and many others) for homeschooling and also reviews it. Please check out the site to decide which apps are best for you. The free Apps include Toontasitic, Mini Word, Magic Coloring, Picturebook, and more. ~posted by Andrea from Notes from a Homeschooling Mom

Literature Video Tutorial: A Midsummer Night's Dream

This video tutorial will give you and your students a greater understanding of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"Frank coaches on the viewing of the beginning of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (2003 with Kevin Klein)."


~posted by Andrea from Notes from a Homeschooling Mom

math4children

 Math4children strives to make learning and teaching math fun.  You will find lessons for grades pre-k-7.

From the site author:

The idea to build this site came one day when he watched with pain how his elder sister tried to teach her two kids math. Jude noticed how painful the lesson was, both for the teacher and kids. He then wondered how many parents and teachers were struggling with the same problem of teaching math to children. Being a very hands-on person, he set about crafting exercises to help his sister teach the little kids. He drew inspiration from his elder brother Kisito whose kid’s website is saving teachers and parents’ lives across the globe.
Though bugged down by his lecturer job at the university he often found time to create exercises to help his sister teach the kids math.
With the remarkable progress made by his little nephews using materials he created, Jude teamed up with his brother Kisito to start www.math4children.com , with the same goal of helping parents and teachers with the daunting task of teaching math to kids.

 ~posted by Andrea from Notes from a Homeschooling Mom

Free online college classes Saylor.org

For those homeschooled students (and others) who have surpassed the challenge of regular high school classes.  This material was designed to be used by college professors to save students the cost of textbooks.

Visit Saylor.org.

From the website:

Our Mission

The mission of the Saylor Foundation is to make education freely available to all. Guided by the belief that technology has the potential to circumvent barriers that prevent many individuals from participating in traditional schooling models, the Foundation is committed to developing and advancing inventive and effective ways of harnessing technology in order to drive the cost of education down to zero.

Enjoy!
~posted by Andrea from Notes from a Homeschooling Mom

Tips for succeeding as a homeschool math teacher

If you are a homeschooling parent, you are also very likely a homeschool math teacher. As if homeschooling weren't hard enough, teaching math by itself can take up a huge chunk of your teaching time, and even a greater share of your pre-occupations.  Fortunately, us homeschooling parents have access to the internet and numerous tools for teaching from online games to virtual manipulatives.

In addition to using the many tools available for help with instructing your children on math, you should also set a positive attitude toward math.  According to www2.ed.gov, Although parents can be a positive force in helping children learn math, they also can undermine their children’s math ability and attitudes by saying
things such as: “Math is hard,” or “I’m not surprised you don’t do well in math, I didn’t like math either when I was in school,” or “I wasn’t very good in math and I’m a success, so don’t worry about doing well.”

Instead, it is better to make math as fun as possible.  Play number games. Have multiplication contests. Let your child see you doing math for fun.  Get books on fun math facts, and challenge your children to do a math riddle every day.   Before long you will find that both you and your children have fallen in love with math, and you will make your entire homeschooling experience more enjoyable.

Before I go, I want to add a last bit of advice.  Spend time on word problems every day.  I have been working with a young man recently who can crunch numbers easily.  Show him a math problem and he can do it... unless it is in word form.  When a problem is in word problem form, he cannot figure out where to start.  It is quite a conundrum that can be avoided by working with word problems early on and introducing math to solve problems instead of numeric functions to figure out.



~posted by Andrea from Notes from a Homeschooling Mom